Camera, action!

If we can take photos with action components, as we have done in the previous sections, then what is the purpose of the TCameraComponent component that can be found in the Additional category on the Tool Palette? A quick answer could be that it is the way to switch on and off the flashlight that most phones are equipped with. A more elaborate answer would be that it can be used to take videos.

The FireMonkey library has generic support for handling the many types of cameras available across different hardware. The actual access to the underlying video hardware is done through the non-visual TCaptureDeviceManager class defined in the FMX.Media unit.

The programming model follows the same pattern as in other platform services. The class itself is abstract, but it has a Current public class property that returns a reference to the actual TCaptureDeviceManager implementation on a given platform. The TCaptureDeviceManager class has a Devices array property where we...